Watch an Application Become a Decision, Screen by Screen

A 30-minute live demo for anyone who runs awards, scholarships or grants. Follow one application through what applicants, reviewers and administrators each see, from the first click to the final decision.

For most application programs, getting entries in isn't the hard part. The hard part is everything after Submit: checking eligibility, getting entries to reviewers, chasing judges who haven't finished, tallying scores, and explaining the result. Many programs still run that work on a form tool, a spreadsheet, email and a shared drive.

This demo is organized around three of the five dimensions of Review Integrity, a framework for judging whether an application and review process is fair, consistent and defensible. Each one lines up with a screen you'll see:

• Intake Proportionality (the applicant screen): does what you ask of applicants match what's at stake for them?
• Reviewer Calibration (the reviewer screen): do reviewers score the same way, or does a result depend on who read the entry?
• Decision Traceability (the admin screen): could you rebuild any decision, with the criteria, the scores and who reviewed it?

When those answers are unclear, the cost goes beyond staff time. Volunteer judges burn out and don't come back. Strong applicants give up on long forms. Decisions get hard to explain to a board, a donor or the applicant who didn't win. And when the process lives in one person's head, the whole program is at risk the year that person moves on.

The form, criteria and judging setup you choose before a cycle opens are what applicants and reviewers live with all season. The best time to see a different way of running it is before your next award, scholarship or grant window opens.

In This 30-Minute Demo, You'll See:

The applicant screen

• A branded application portal with save-and-return
• Eligibility questions that screen out entries that don't qualify, before anyone reads them
• Forms that show only the questions that apply, plus references collected with automatic reminders

The reviewer screen

• The entry and a weighted scorecard side by side, with files and video built in
• Reviewers assigned by category or region, so every judge doesn't read every entry
• Applicant names and other identifying form fields hidden for blind review

The admin screen

• Status tracking and automatic reminders for applicants and reviewers
• A report that flags harsh and lenient scorers before they tip a result
• Results and rankings you can download, and emails sent from your own domain
• Acceptance forms, thank-you notes and follow-up collected after the decision
• Next year's program cloned instead of rebuilt

Bring your questions. We'll answer them as we go.

Who Should Attend

Anyone who runs an application-based program: association and professional-society awards, foundation grants and scholarships, youth-organization scholarships and assistance programs, company-sponsored awards and community giving, and credit union and bank community programs. It's especially useful if you're running one or more programs on forms, spreadsheets and email, or if you've inherited a program and want to see what else is possible.

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